New Jersey

I spent two days at the hostel before hiking on. Orion and I made a particularly difficult departure late in the afternoon, leaving an imminent church potluck supper behind. We hiked for about ten miles before being overcome by darkness. The days had noticably shortened and one could no longer hike until 9 at night. We made it to Camp Mohican, an AMC run facility.

I seperated from Orion the next day when he took time off to meet friends. Raindancer was a day ahead so I settled into some solitary hiking for the next few days. One night I spent alone at Brink Road Shelter, a place that looked as though it had been frequently used by youngsters looking to get out from under their parents supervision and unsettlingly close to civilization. It also had a bear box, a small metal container with a latch bolted on to a slab of concrete. A ridgerunner I had spoken to my first day in the state warned about bears. We were in a stretch of land were they were not hunted and in recent years had become rather bold. He also said that nothing will attract bears faster than the smell of a cooking hamburger. In the shelter register, Lao Hu complained of a bear walking off with his water filter while he was at the shelter.

New York City. No, really. The picture doesn't do it justice. Trust me. You could see it much better in real life. Also, notice the color of some of the trees. It ain't autumn folks.

I passed over the highest point in the state (appropriately named “High Point”) and wandered through fields and woods that were quite close to people's backyards. Just before the town of Vernon, I had to contend with a 1.5 mile long roadwalk along a busy state highway. It did not feel safe and cars honked frequently at me. I have since learned that a reroute is in the process of being completed pending some final property negotiations with a local landowner.

No matter, New Jersey was still quite pretty. There was a certain safeness to walking through the woods despite the presence of bear boxes at the shelters. It was the kind of forest one would find in your own backyard that you would run around in as a kid. In Vernon, I managed to get a ride to the hostel and found Raindancer already there.

A day or so later, I crested a small ridge. The drought had caused the leaves of many trees to brown and fall off. It was only August. I found myself looking down at the swaths of brown and green at a vast lake in the valley below. Beyond that, past numerous discolored ridges, was a clump of distant grey pillars. New York City. It was a long time before I could motivate myself to move on.

Just past the New York state line, I met some teens camping. I questioned their use of a fire seeing as how Harriman State Park was on fire a mere thiry miles northeast. They were punks and had an attitude.“Don't worry, we'll be careful,” said one in a snotty tone. I sighed and prepare to move on but before I did, something caught my eye. They had set up a wire grill over the fire and one of them dropped something on it.

They were cooking up hamburgers.

I smiled, wished them a good night and departed.